Page:Helen Keller - Optimism.pdf/44

 If we compare our own time with the past, we find in modern statistics a solid foundation for a confident and buoyant world-optimism. Beneath the doubt, the unrest, the materialism, which surround us still glows and burns at the world’s best life a steadfast faith. To hear the pessimist, one would think civilization had ed in the Middle Ages, and had not had marching orders since. He does not realize that the progress of evolution is not an uninterrupted march.

I have recently read an address by one whose knowledge it would be presumptuous to challenge. In it I find abundant evidence of progress.

During the past fifty years crime has decreased. True, the records of